


a heart like yours

by augusthope



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: Angst, Car Accidents, Character Death, F/M, If I Stay AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 03:13:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14010918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/augusthope/pseuds/augusthope
Summary: A few years after Girl Meets World ends, Maya finds herself making an impossible decision.





	a heart like yours

⠀When Maya opens her eyes, everything is hazy. She doesn't get up until the faint sirens she heard a few minutes ago are echoing in her ears, and she can hear people talking. Maya stands and realises that she can't see the other car. She doesn't remember what it looked like, or what they were talking about before her mother screamed and Shawn tried to swerve out of the way, but Maya knows that there is another car and it is almost definitely their fault.  
⠀She also knows that this isn't the right thing to be doing, that it was probably nobody's fault and right now she should be holding her mother's hand or being looked at by the paramedics, but the shock is quickly being replaced by anger and she's not sure how else to deal with it.  
⠀Her heart freezes in her chest when she sees the wreck of her mother's car lying upside-down in the middle of the road. Blonde hair spills out of the shattered window while a paramedic slides Shawn onto a stretcher. Maya sees them reach down to take his pulse, realise that it's not there and lean over to start CPR, and she has to look away because it seems like only seconds ago he was alive and breathing and laughing at the awful joke she found on Daisy's biscuit wrapper. She turns around and sees Daisy crying in the arms of a paramedic as she's lifted into an ambulance and breathes a sigh of relief. Maya reaches towards her, brushing her hair away from her face, but Daisy doesn't notice. She's still crying, struggling against the paramedic's grip. "I want Maya," she sobs, and Maya frowns.  
  "I'm right here," she says, and Daisy turns towards her, but something's not right. She's looking in Maya's direction but not at her, as if she can't see Maya at all. Maya turns to find out what Daisy's looking at and that's when she sees another person, lying in a ditch by the side of the road. The girl's surrounded by paramedics and medical equipment but Maya can see a silver bracelet hanging from her wrist - Maya's bracelet, and the boots she's wearing now, and suddenly nothing makes sense. Maya is standing in the snow, watching the aftermath of an icy road and a split-second decision, but the girl in the ditch is her too, unconscious and being lifted onto a stretcher to be taken to the nearest hospital.  
Maybe it's a dream or some sort of hallucination but Maya can feel the snow beneath her feet and hear the shouts of the paramedics as they assess everyone's injuries, even if everything does feel muted and unreal, and if it's a dream, it's the most realistic one she's ever had.

 

⠀At the hospital, Maya is pulled into surgery right away. She follows the doctors down long corridors, past signs that read authorised personnel only, until they reach an operating theatre. She stops by the window in the door and watches the surgeons prepare, reaching for trays of scalpels and plastic gloves. A nurse leans down until she's close enough to push Unconscious Maya's hair out of her face, moving it to one side so that it won't get in the way of the equipment.  
⠀"It's all up to you, you know," she whispers, and Maya jumps. Maybe someone can see her. But when she looks up again, the nurse is still crouched down beside her lifeless body. "If you want to live, you've got to fight for it."  
⠀Maya walks out of the operating room before the surgeon begins. She doesn't think she can handle seeing her own body being cut open, and she doesn't know where her mom, Shawn or Daisy went after the crash. Are they even at the hospital yet? She eventually finds her way out of the maze of corridors to the waiting room, and walks up to the desk.  
⠀"Do you have any information about Katy and Shawn Hunter? Hello?" The receptionist ignores her, confirming Maya's suspicions. Nobody else can see her, so for now she's stuck in a waiting room while her body is being cut open. Her heart leaps when another ambulance pulls up to the hospital and Maya runs outside, but when the doors open it's a kid with a broken arm, not her mother. She's about to give up and return to the operating room - she still feels the morbid curiosity that makes people interested in car crashes and serial killers, even if everything else feels numb - when another ambulance arrives.  
⠀Maya freezes, watching silently as doctors take Katy, who's still unconscious, in the same direction they took Maya when she arrived. She's startled out of her trance by another doctor's words - "...flipped right over. The mom's in surgery, the dad was DOA. They tried CPR at the scene, but it was too late. Poor kids..."  
Shawn's dead. Her head's spinning from the news.

 

⠀Riley arrives an hour later. Maya watches her ask where to go at the front desk and talk to her grandmother about Katy and Shawn, but they're gone now. They're dead, they've both been dead for hours and Maya hasn't even cried. Maybe it hasn't sunk in yet because everything still feels like a dream. Like she can wake up and start this day again, but there won't be an icy road or a car crash next time.  
⠀Her attention drifts away from the conversation as Angela repeats her injuries to Riley. Maya could hear those words a thousand times and it wouldn't matter because while she vaguely remembers one of the nurses explaining it in simpler terms, she still doesn't know what they mean for her recovery, if she recovers.  
⠀The nurse said it was up to her, but Maya doesn't know how to fight for this. Maybe she doesn't want to.   
⠀"Come on, Maya. Wake up, please."  
 _⠀"I can't. I don't know how."_  
⠀"You're a fighter, Maya."  
⠀Not anymore, she thinks. Maya has always fought for what she wants and she knows that Riley thinks this makes her strong and fearless and brave, but it doesn't. It just means that there's something she needs and she doesn't see any other way to get it. Fighting doesn't make her strong enough to survive in a world without three of the most important people in her life.  
⠀"I know it will be hard but you're strong, you'll get better."  
⠀ _Not from this._  
⠀"I need you to get better." Riley's voice cracks and Maya turns away. She wants to repeat Riley's words back to her. _You're a fighter too. You never give up. When I go, you'll survive. You'll get better, but I can't._ Because losing her best friend might make Riley want to give up on everything else, but she would get back up again. She'd have her family, a picture-perfect mom and dad and brother, and she's never been short of friends who would drop everything to help her out. In the grand scheme of things, maybe Riley Matthews doesn't need Maya Hart at all. And eventually, after weeks or months of grieving and tears, she'd have Lucas, too. Maybe they were always meant to be together, and this is the universe's way of telling Maya that she was wrong.


End file.
